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Flowering plants to beautify road dividers, islands

COLOURFUL: Flower beds at a special nursery developed with seed and grafts brought from Pune at Autonagar in Vijayawada.

Staff Reporter

Main roads will be given priority: official

The seedlings are of export quality, says official

Plan to cultivate over 10,000 seedlings

VIJAYAWADA: The Municipal Corporation will beautify the roads, dividers and traffic islands with a variety of seasonal flowering plants.

The municipal corporation raised four varieties of seasonal flowering plants in its recently-developed nursery at Gurunanak Nagar road.

This is the first batch of flowering plants that have been raised in the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC)’s own nursery.

Plants ready

The horticulture wing of the corporation brought seedlings of Petunia, Dianthus, Verbena, and Vinca Rosea from Pune a month ago and cultivated them in the nursery. Nearly 2,000 flowering plants are ready for planting at various locations in the city. The officials are hopeful that the city will sport a new look if these plants were potted on road dividers and traffic islands. Additional Director (Horticulture) Ch. Ravi Kumar said that the flowering plants, which are ready to cover the dividers and islands, could cover at least 500 sq. metres of area. The corporation, however, requires plants to cover as much as 1,000 sq metres of area in the city. Main roads like Bandar Road, Eluru road, parks including Rajiv Gandhi Park near Pandit Nehru Bus Station (PNBS), Raghavaiah Park on Bandar Road and Gandi in One Town, would be given priority, the horticulture official said.

Pune-based suppliers

Mr. Ravi Kumar said that the seedlings were of ‘export quality’. The seedlings worth of Rs. 60,000 were purchased from Pune-based suppliers.

Generally, these varieties of seedlings were imported from Germany and Holland. “We had to cultivate the seedlings in general conditions, as the mist chamber did not become operational in time. But, the results are encouraging,” he said. Mr. Ravi Kumar said that they planned to cultivate 10,000 seedlings, if the mist chamber were ready. “As a trial and error method, we cultivated only 2,000 plants,” he said.

Own nursery

The corporation officials borrowed the idea of the concept of covering the islands and dividers with seasonal flowering plants from the Hyderabad Urban Development Authority. Till now, the horticulture wing used to grow only ornamental plants.

Mist chamber

To achieve this, it set up its own nursery to propagate all varieties of flowering plants.

It constructed a mist chamber and shade net home, so that the required temperature can be maintained for raising the seedlings. With all these efforts, the road dividers and islands in Vijayawada will soon get a fresh look.